Jane Berger is the certified K-12 specialist for Let Me Learn. She has 13 years experience in the education field along with her Masters in School Counseling. She is the mother of two and happily shares her home stories with you.
When I was younger my mom used to give us afghans to drape over the chairs in the family room. This made for the most wonderful castles and use of our imaginations. We would stay under the blankets for hours on end. And when we were done, my sister and I would fold the afghans and neatly place them on the couch.
My oldest child E, who uses her confluence first, was thrilled at this idea and once I handed her the comforter draped as much as her little arms could drape. Once we were through she immediately began to add items to her new home. Items such as a rocking horse, baby cradle, baby doll, baby food, blankets, Legos, books, snacks, alphabet caterpillar toy, string, and a Cinderella dress were placed strategically around her newly covered space. I left her blissfully playing with her new home, castle, or school, whatever she was calling it at that minute.
Several hours later it was time for her nap and as I looked in her room, I found everything and their mother under this cape. I thought about having to clean this up later and that if it was left on the floor overnight my husband and I might trip over items and surely break our necks. So I said, “E, let’s take out two items that we can put away now.” Her response was one of great sorrow for she had an explanation for why she placed each piece where it now sat. I could see her confluent balloon being slowly deflated as she and I debated back and forth as to why we needed to clean up. I finally took my role as the adult and a person who uses sequence on the higher end of as needed and grabbed two items from the cave of stuff and put them away. E screamed, I placed her in bed for her nap, and she cried for the next 15 minutes while I called my mom for advice.
As a person who uses confluence first, she explained that E would in time clean up her things, but her castle was now as she wanted it…perfect. There was a reason for all of her items as it completed her picture of what she wanted to create. This was her imagination station! My sequence needed to calm down and recognize that we would clean this in due time, and that it wasn’t harming anyone to leave it as it was.
I hung up the phone and when E woke up from her nap I hugged her and gave back her two items. I explained that we can clean everything up when she was finished playing with the blankets. She said, “Oh, thank you so much mommy. I really needed these as a part of my castle. These things are all so special to me and make my home perfect.” She continued to play until the sun set that evening.
And just as confluence so often does, the next morning she wanted to take it down and do something else with the blanket….
